Bakersfield has a live music culture that runs deeper than most California cities its size. The Bakersfield Sound — that raw, honky-tonk country style pioneered by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard in the 1950s and 60s — created a tradition of working-class bars with real bands. That tradition is still alive, most formally at the Crystal Palace, where live Bakersfield-style country plays on weekends to an enthusiastic crowd that actually dances.
The downtown has seen a modest revival around the Padre Hotel corridor, with a handful of bars and cocktail spots aimed at a younger professional crowd. For the older bar culture — the dive bars and honky-tonks where the Sound was born — you need to look at the older commercial strips on Niles Street and along Highway 178.